Former mixed martial arts fighter Sharice Davids scored a major political victory in her home state, as she was elected in Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District on Tuesday night.Recent News on Sherdog.com

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Former professional MMA fighter Sharice Davids has made United States history as the first openly gay Native American woman to be elected to the United States House of Representatives. A Democrat, she came from behind to win against an incumbent in Republican-leaning Kansas, and joins former professional fighter Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as former MMA fighters who serve in Congress.

Davids has spoken out in support of Leslie Smith and Project Spearhead, the attempt to unionize UFC fighters. She is a graduate of Cornell University, a lawyer and a former White House fellow. Her election comes as Democrats have flipped control of the House for the first time in nearly a decade. Over 100 women have been elected to Congress in the process, an all-time high.

Davids’ MMA career has taken her from Team Bombsquad in NY, where she trained alongside a young Jon Jones, to Jackson-Winklejohn in New Mexico, where she trained for The Ultimate Fighter tryouts. While she didn’t make the cut to get onto the show, she did tap current UFC fighter Nina Ansaroff. She had two professional bouts, in 2013 and 2014. She told MMAFighting.com that her MMA career heavily influenced her political career.

“For me, it impacts every facet of my life,” Davids said. “From my ability in staying calm — and it’s not to say I don’t get upset or any of that stuff. But I do think that like when you spend a while bunch of time literally getting punched, if you get angry every time you get punched, you’re not gonna last that long, because you’re gonna get burnt out.

“Just knowing that you do this thing on a regular basis that most people, one, never experience, and two, that you can recognize that you can disentangle your emotions from your physical state, from your ability to perform. For me just being able to recognize that, having that mindset is really, really helpful.”

This is interesting- boxing referees apparently don’t like superman punches.

I’ve done this in 2 separate boxing fights with the same ref. Both times rocked my opponents. First time they said nothing, second time the ref came at me with a hard warning saying you can’t “jump and punch”. What about Mike Tyson and David Tua’s flying left hooks?!?! https://t.co/xGBAbsYZmV

It remains to be seen if Anthony Smith ends up facing Jon Jones in the coming months, but “Lionheart” delivered a warning to the former, light-heavyweight champ, following his win last night at UFC Moncton.

Smith took on fellow contender, Volkan Oezdemir in Saturday’s headliner, and proceeded to finish the feared striker with a rear-naked-choke in round three. Following round two, it looked like Oezdemir might be headed to victory, as he controlled much of the second frame. Smith, however, rebounded in round three, and scored the biggest win of his career.

Well, after the bout, Jones was asked for his take on Smith’s performance, and the star labelled it as “OK”. Smith was asked to respond to Jones’ tweet, and here’s some of what he had to say (quotes via MMA Junkie):

“If he ain’t worried about it, what’s he watching for?” Smith said. “Jon Jones should worry about Alexander Gustafsson first. I think that performance was exactly one Jon Jones would hate to see. You’re not going to get me out of there with a little bit of flash and some hard punches. That ain’t going to happen. But if I was Jon Jones, I would probably be a little bit more worried about Alexander Gustafsson than Anthony Smith right now.”

“(He’s not going to win) if he’s more focused about what me and Volkan Oezdemir are doing, that’s for damn sure,” Smith added. “The best Jon Jones has to show up to win that fight. I’d imagine with all the time off that Jon is going to train his ass off. He claims that he didn’t train at all for the first one, so the real Jon Jones shows up, I’d imagine he gets it done. I hope he does because that’s who I want. That’s no disrespect to Gustafsson. I want to be the man to take out Jon Jones, but he’s got to get through Gus first.”

There you have it. Now, Jones’ comments shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise really. While Smith showed a ton of heart last night, and once again, demonstrated he’s a very dangerous fighter, he didn’t cruise through Oezdemir. It should also be noted that Jones didn’t come out and outright, criticize Smith’s performance either.

Smith is on point in noting that Jones should worry about beating Gustafsson first, after all, their first fight in 2013 was very competitive, and “The Mauler” has remained a top contender for a reason. The two will rematch on December 29th at UFC 232, which will go down in Las Vegas, Nevada.

After four years and eight fights in the Octagon, Alvarez entered free agency after his last fight (a TKO loss to Dustin Poirier), and has just signed with Asian promotion ONE Championship.

If you’ll recall, Alvarez used to fight in Japan back in the day. He then jumped to Bellator and became a champ there before going to the UFC.

ONE is considered the best Asian-based promotion out there, and they regularly hold events in countries the UFC has never been able to break into (like Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand – they even have an event scheduled for Myanmar (whose government would probably arrest and execute half the MMA media outright).

It’s a safe bet that Alvarez is getting paid a healthy sum for this move.

After four years and eight fights in the Octagon, Alvarez entered free agency after his last fight (a TKO loss to Dustin Poirier), and has just signed with Asian promotion ONE Championship.

If you’ll recall, Alvarez used to fight in Japan back in the day. He then jumped to Bellator and became a champ there before going to the UFC.

ONE is considered the best Asian-based promotion out there, and they regularly hold events in countries the UFC has never been able to break into (like Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand – they even have an event scheduled for Myanmar (whose government would probably arrest and execute half the MMA media outright).

It’s a safe bet that Alvarez is getting paid a healthy sum for this move.